I've only ever done it with machinegun shots but seeing it done on arrows makes me wonder if using the Claws Y or DS X counter on explosive arrows would be a good method of closing distance to them without getting blasted to hell in places like the Ch.02 stairs and the long walkway up top of the stairs in the beginning of Ch.03 Never considered it before but it feels like "damn, why didn't it occur to me years ago?".

Massaca wrote:I've only ever done it with machinegun shots but seeing it done on arrows makes me wonder if using the Claws Y or DS X counter on explosive arrows would be a good method of closing distance to them without getting blasted to hell in places like the Ch.02 stairs and the long walkway up top of the stairs in the beginning of Ch.03 Never considered it before but it feels like "damn, why didn't it occur to me years ago?".

Yeah, could be the case with archers. The distance Ryu travels with the counter though is fairly small though, so you need to be a bit closer to the archers to hit them and at that distance you might as well use FS

I'm thinking for much longer distances if you could chain counters quickly enough. I don't know how long you're vulnerable for afterwards though. I just always had issues dodging explosive arrows on MN.

For what it's worth, I spent a small amount of time testing this back when I was obsessed with CH11 MN no UT stuff. My initial thought going in was that you could just counter through an IS that was thrown at you, negating the problem of them sticking to you, using claws Y counter, or any counter that was I-frame heavy.

I don't remember much except that I was disappointed with the results. The problem is that the usefulness on Ch11 is pretty limited due to the huge amount of projectiles that are thrown at you. Even if you get the counter, the longer range counters are just not as useful to the very high health fiend ninjas(you'd be playing for position then delimbing, since fiend ninjas rarely ever die aside from delimbs or OTs), plus chances are you will either be stuck during your counter, or you'll just straight up miss your counter and be stuck with 2 or 3 IS.

I abandoned the strategy for the CH11 stuff I was doing because it's so much more useful(and much more reliable) to just guard once you're stuck, so you can have your guard be broken and use the crazy extra I-frames from the blue guard break dash you get afterwards. This strategy basically works in the same way, except instead of getting a counter hit move, you get 360Y or ->Y, etc.

The only counter I can think of that it might really be cool to try this with is the kusarigama Y counter. If you grabbed one stray arrow or IS with the Y counter, it could just delimb an entire group of enemies and change the entire encounter. I'm playing other things than NG lately but still a good find, cool to talk about.

I remember trying it, but I don't remember why I didn't pursue it. Regardless though, to me when Ryu's guard is broken (At least the type from an IS) it's an incredibly strong tool that makes no UTing in NG2 possible against even the most difficult enemies, because the blue dash you get gives you extra I-frames to connect any move you want. It's a matter of choosing to block and have your guard broken, or choosing to counter the explosion(if that even works)

Just straight countering an explosion instead might save you some chip damage, but chances are they will restick you during
the landed counter animation.

Still I don't want to write it off without remembering why, if I get back into NG2 I'll definitely check this out.

And once again, if that actually works, kusarigama Y counter could actually benefit in a big way from it, so who knows